


strong as a pine tree (always an evergreen)

by brightblackholes



Series: Music To My Ears [3]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alive Noah Czerny, Depression, Eating Disorders, Mental Health Issues, Suicidal Thoughts, but this is my band au so noah survives, he just doesn't have a good time while doing it, if this sounds depressing that because it is!, post-whelk's attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 01:20:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21235778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightblackholes/pseuds/brightblackholes
Summary: Noah wakes up and everythinghurts.That doesn’t make any sense, because the last thing that Noah remembers is dying.Noah wakes up in the hospital after his best friend tried to kill him.  Things don't get much better from there.Written for writer's month day 11: whump





	strong as a pine tree (always an evergreen)

**Author's Note:**

> Friends I'm going to be honest. I HATE writing whump, but what the writer's month prompts ask for, the writer's month prompts get. Even though it is now October and I am over 2 months behind for writer's month.
> 
> This takes place in my band AU, but before any of the other stories (that I've written so far...). There's no need to read the other stories to understand what happens here, just know that Noah is very much alive and has a lot of mental health issues that sprung up after his friend tried to. you know. murder him in cold blood. Keep yourselves safe please and don't read if that could be triggering!
> 
> There are a lot of medical inaccuracies here.
> 
> Title is from "Evergreen" by Knuckle Puck

Noah wakes up and  _ everything  _ hurts.

That doesn’t make any sense, because the last thing that Noah remembers is dying. Whelk hit him with the skateboard, pain bloomed across his face and in his head and down along his spine, his life flashed before his eyes, he had the fleeting thought of  _ I never told my mother I was sorry for drinking her birthday schnapps _ , and then everything went black and he died.

Or maybe not.

There’s a Blink-182 song playing, and he’s choking on a tube shoved down his throat, and he thinks people start scrambling before everything goes dark again.

-/-

When Noah wakes up again, he still has the tube down his throat, but he feels a bit less scrambled.

He’s not dead. Somehow, he survived.

“Noah? Baby, can you hear me?” his mom asks, and Noah’s eyes slide over to her standing over him. She smiles at him, but it’s a bit watery. “You’ll be good to breathe on your own now, so they’re going to try taking the tube out, okay?”

He tries to respond, but barely any sound comes out, and it’s hard to nod. He stays awake a bit after the tube comes out, but it’s hard, and his mother keeps asking him questions that he doesn’t know the answer to. He loses consciousness quickly.

-/-

The next time he’s awake long enough for it to matter, Adele is there with a textbook open in front of her, chewing on her pencil eraser. He spends a few seconds looking at her before he tries to swallow and speak. It doesn’t work, but it’s enough to make her look up, anyway.

“Noah!” she yells, and her pencil goes flying out of her hand. “Wait, I have water!”

There’s a cup with a straw by his bed, and she holds it still while he takes a sip, although the rest of her is practically vibrating. When he finally stops sipping, she sets the cup down and stares at him.

“Hi,” he tries to say, and she bursts into tears.

Adele isn’t one to cry, and that’s alarming Noah more than anything. That, and her short hair. Adele had long hair when he last saw her, and now it barely brushes her shaking shoulders.

He tries to reach out to her, but his arm doesn’t want to listen to him. He can barely get it to shift an inch.

He feels his breathing start to speed up, a loud beeping echoing in his ears until a nurse comes in and he realizes it’s his own heart rate monitor, accelerating with every labored breath he can’t quite get in.

“Noah, I’m going to need to you try to slow down your breathing for me, okay?” the nurse says, one gentle hand placed against his chest. “Adele is going to step outside while we get you calmed down, then you can talk to her afterwards.”

He can’t nod, but the nurse continues talking anyway, helping him pull his knees up and asking him to lean forward a bit, rubbing circles on his back and counting breaths, even when he can’t quite do it slow enough to keep with her rhythm. Eventually, she stops.

“Good, Noah. That was good.” She takes the water from his bedside table and holds the straw steady for him while he sips. He’s so tired, but he wants to see Adele. He wants to know what’s going on.

“My name is Jessica,” the nurse says. “I’ve been helping take care of you since you got in. You’ll meet Hayley and Aaron later, as well as Dr. Henderson, the other members of your care team. Would you like me to call in Adele again, or phone your parents?”

“Adele,” he says. His voice is scratchy, but it produces sound this time. Jessica smiles at him. It’s warm and kind, but it isn’t familiar. He wants something familiar. He wants something that makes sense, and so far nothing here does.

Adele’s eyes are red rimmed, but she marches right back over to her chair, falls into it, and grabs his hand.

“Noah,” she says, and squeezes his hand. “How--how are you feeling?”

“Bad,” he says flatly. Adele bursts out laughing.

“I’m sorry,” she sniffles. “It’s not funny. But you just--bad!”

Noah makes an annoyed sound and Adele takes some deep breaths until she’s back under control.

“Sorry you just--you’ve been here for a month and knocked out for most of that and all you can say is  _ ‘bad.’ _ ”

Noah stares at Adele’s shoulder-length hair.

“A month?”

Her eyes shift down to her math homework, then to the water on his bedside table.

“Yeah, a month,” she says quietly. “I mean--you really were out of it for a long time. We weren’t really sure if you’d wake up, and then you did, and then you were out again, and then… We’ve been here every day, though. Mom and Dad are at work and getting groceries right now, but they’ll be back later. It’s not like you’ve been alone. And the swim team all sent flowers, and some other classmates, and the flowers kind of dried out but like someone sent a teddy bear and that’s still here.”

She reaches around and places it in his lap. It’s small and blue. He brings a hand up to touch it and the effort leaves him exhausted. His arm feels heavier than it should, but he doesn’t think it’s from all the tubes he’s hooked up to.

“Onri?” he asks, and Adele brightens.

“Right here,” she says, pulling his stuffed duck from where it was wedged between the mattress and the railing of the bed and placing it directly into his hand. The fur feels soft. He flexes his fingers and takes comfort in the fact that at least Onri is here, like he has been since the day Adele was born. It’s a small comfort.

He makes an aborted attempt at asking some questions. Adele’s face pinches but she tries her best to answer and he tries his best to listen and process. He falls back asleep in the middle of her talking about hospital food, after having been awake for what only feels like seconds.

-/-

His mom cries when Noah wakes up with her there the first time. She’s much more of a cryer than Adele, so he isn’t as shocked by it, but there’s still something unnerving about seeing your mother cry and knowing that it’s because of you.

“Mom,” he says urgently. “Mom, your birthday… birthday--” He can’t think of the word, and his mom is still crying, and everything is so loud but he needs to apologize.

“What is it, baby?” she asks through her sniffles. He lets out a frustrated sound and squeezes his eyes closed, trying to find the words.

“Your birthday! I drank it and I’m sorry.”

Her eyebrows are knit together and her forehead is wrinkling from crying, and he hates it. He hates that he’s here and has been for over a month without even knowing, and that he can’t think of the stupid word for whatever he drank, and that his limbs still won’t obey him properly.

“Baby, what are you talking about?”

He groans, frustrated, and tears prick at his eyes.

He feels so  _ stupid _ .

_ Stupid worthless even your best friend hated you enough to kill you but you couldn’t even  _ die _ \-- _

His mom touches his arm, taking his hand and rubbing the back of it with her thumb.

“Sweetheart, please, it’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay.”

“Your birthday,” he says helplessly. “You were upset and you didn’t know who drank it but it was me. It was me and I’m sorry.”

“My schnapps?” she asks. Noah starts crying in earnest and doesn’t stop for a while.

-/-

Noah will not be going back to school this year. He’s already missed two months, and there would be no way for him to make it up at this point, plus he has physical therapy and mental exercises to ensure that he can still function as a human being.

He has memory problems sometimes. Mood swings. His limbs don’t like to listen on the left side especially and his muscles have deteriorated thanks to his month of being a vegetable and not moving. Half of his face is numb now, because they had to reconstruct his cheek, so speaking sometimes is weird.

The first time he eats something other than jello and broth and whatever else they were pumping him with in the IV, he throws up. Jessica tells him they’ll work up to solid foods, and he wants to tell her not to bother. He doesn’t have much of an appetite anyway.

Jessica is his favorite nurse. Hayley keeps looking at him like she pities him, and Noah doesn’t even deserve her pity. Aaron greets him with “dude” and “bro” sometimes like he’s trying to be relatable. Whelk used to call him “bro” sometimes, and the thought always makes Noah want to do something drastic, like jump out the window.

Dr. Henderson says that he’s improving, and Noah considers telling him that the only reason he hasn’t killed himself is because it’s harder to in the hospital and Jessica gave him a list of songs by bands he hasn’t heard and he hasn’t had a chance to listen to them yet.

-/-

When Noah finally steps foot back into his house, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. The cleaning lady had dusted and vacuumed in his room, but it still managed to feel foreign and grimy after two months in a pristine hospital with crisp white sheets on the bed.

When he opens the door to his room, the first thing that he sees is the poster for AC/DC that Whelk got him in middle school. Noah doesn’t even like them that much, but Whelk doesn’t know anything about music and made an effort for a 12 year old, and it’s stayed in a place of honor amongst Blink-182 and  _ Pirates of the Carribean _ ever since.

There’s nothing in his stomach to throw up, but Noah finds himself dry heaving in the hallway anyway.

-/-

No one visits him or calls to see how he’s doing. Noah thought he had some friends on the swim team, or even that some of the band kids would follow up since he used to spend so much time using the drum kit after school.

He’s alone a lot, but he attempts suicide when his mother is in the house, and she calls the paramedics. Noah wonders how he managed to fail at dying a second time, and now he has to spend even more time in the hospital, except this time he’s in a different ward and he doesn’t like any of the nurses as much as he liked Jessica.

When he’s released, he has some new prescriptions, appointments with a therapist, and a few new diagnoses. His mom and Adele both cry some more, and it makes Noah feel guiltier than ever.

-/-

Time passes. Noah mostly regains use of his limbs, but physical therapy is still mandatory and still hurts sometimes. The mental exercises are worse, because Noah has never been overly smart, but he’s never been  _ dumb _ either. He can’t find easy words now, and he’ll forget what he ate for breakfast or conversations that he just had. Sometimes, everything feels muffled, like he’s under water and everyone else is on land.

He stops looking in the mirror when he passes, brushing his teeth at night with the lights off so he doesn’t have to see his reconstructed face. He doesn’t know if the smudge on his cheek is an actual result of the surgery or just in his head, but it doesn't matter anyway. He’s gained some weight from his meds and there are permanent bags under his eyes. He doesn’t want to look at himself and he doesn’t want anyone else to, either.

He made it through Jessica’s list of songs to listen to a long time ago, but that doesn’t stop him from pressing play again and turning the volume all the way up. Maybe if he focuses on the pounding drumbeat, it can replace his heartbeat, and he can stop existing as a person and start existing as a piece of music instead. What a life that would be.

-/-

His parents go all out for his birthday, even though it’s a small celebration with just the four of them there. The family hops on a plane and head to New York for a few days, letting Adele miss some school and taking time off of work for it. They see the statue of liberty like proper tourists, then go watch  _ Hamilton _ on Broadway. Noah finds himself tapping his toes during it, and he feels pretty happy for possibly the first time since the accident. When they’re eating brunch the next day, he doesn’t have any issues following conversation and simultaneously handling his fork and knife. It feels almost like before.

That night, his parents surprise him with tickets to a Knuckle Puck concert. Noah goes and yells his heart out, trying to believe himself when he joins the other voices screaming  _ forever strong as a pine tree, always an evergreen _ .

The last present he gets is a drum kit. He cries.

-/-

Jessica visits him the next time he ends up in the hospital for his depression. He’s so shocked about it that he cries. She waits for him to stop blubbering before she hands him a new list of songs to listen to.

“I got a drum kit for my birthday, but I haven’t tested it out yet,” he tells her eventually. She cocks her head.

“Why not?”

He shrugs.

“Getting back into drumming would be really good for you. You obviously love music a lot, and it’s a more physical instrument and exercise releases endorphins and serotonin, plus it’ll keep your motor skills functioning.”

Jessica never fills the silence when he takes a long time to answer, just waits for him to fill it himself. It’s something that he ended up missing once he was out of his initial hospital stint and didn’t get to see her anymore. Everyone else talks over him once it gets too awkward.

“I think I’m scared,” he says after a full minute. He knows because he was able to sing up to the second verse of “All the Small Things” in his head.

“Scared of what?” she asks.

“That I won’t be good anymore. That this is something else he--he took away from me.” Noah can feel his expression crumbling, the same way his cheek did under the pressure of the skateboard all those months ago.

“Well, you have taken a few months off, so you’re going to be rusty, but you can’t let that stop you. Can you look at me?” He tries to meet her eyes. “Not trying is letting him take it from you anyway. You can’t let that happen. Fight tooth and nail for it. This music is yours, so pick it back up and claim it again.”

She plays a game with him in the rec room until visiting hours are over, and they talk about lighter things. When she leaves, he puts her list of songs carefully away and tries not to think about what his life would be like without music.

-/-

Noah has spent the last twenty minutes standing and staring at his drum kit. A new pair of sticks sit still in their package on the stool, and the cymbals look shiny in the light. It’s almost too neat and clean. He wants to tarnish everything up a bit.

He wants to  _ play _ .

So he sits down on the stool, takes the sticks in his hands, and plays.

**Author's Note:**

> If I write a multi-chaptered story taking place after "Music to My Ears", it would center around Noah. I just think he's neat and already have a playlist of songs he would listen to lol. Is that something people would actually be interested in?
> 
> Thank you for reading! Comments and kudos are appreciated.


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